Hip Hip Hooray: Hipstamatic for iPhone

On the extreme side of fine-tuned, high-res & properly composed/framed/exposed photography, lies a genre that begets joy. Most of the time, everything is accidental, composition is point-and-shoot-lucky-if-you’re-in-the-shot, exposure is horrid by your instructor’s standard and out-of-focus is the new focus. But it’s fun. So much fun someone decided to resurrect an old phenomenon of another lo-fi camera sensation.

The result is something purely original, yet signified by a brilliant sets of feat that’ll make grandpa proud, drop dead simple you wish it arrived much sooner, it’s environmentally green too, so green I’m sure Al Gore & his photographer wife, Tipper will be snapping around their christmas dinner with this lovely gem. Yes, films are needed but is not limited to 36 frames.

So how do you recreate a hippies’ freedom of analog joy — with all the organic elements — for the 21st century vowel-loosing era? Put the iPhone to the picture, throw in a designer & a developer and you’ll get yourself a perfectly usable digital incarnation of this fading sensation.

Pixel perfect graphics puts a pseudo camera into the screen of your iPhone, the front side to swipe lenses, films, gels & flashes; and the back façade gives you the plastic feel viewfinder, a flash on/off switch and its signature yellow shutter button.

One final touch of this finely crafted graphics? A drop-dead-realistic sound effect that makes everything feels natural.

So what makes this app so special? Clearly, pretty face alone can’t do justice, but throw in a handsome looking pictures — it’s 100% film like, the best I have seen on any digital media, a brilliant programming — it’s 100% analog camera like, the best classic to digital/iPhone transfer I have seen on any digital media, you got yourself a nice christmas gift. Thank you Santa.

Too bad, the $1.99 purchase only gives you the basics, you gotta pop in additional $2 to make it game: $1 for the BlacKeys Film Pack (B/W film, pixel perfect film bleed to wrap your 6×6 frames) and another $1 for Williamsburg Bundle that gives a you a Helga Viking lens, 3 color-gelled flashes & the brilliant Pistil Film that gives your hipsta-print a nice black border.

It’s a perfect $5 christmas gift for yourself, or your iPhone-using-paparazzo friend, yes occasional crash still happens and opting in high-res output gives you the never-ending wait to snap another around, but you’re in for a different kind of iPhone-photography game, people… and this time you might want to stay a little longer cause digital never felt & looked so finely analog.